Skinners’ Academies Trust
‘ofsted’
No one wants to be labelled inadequate by Ofsted, says Lynn Merilion, who describes the journey to improvement after it happened to her college earlier this year The days when Ofsted gave colleges three weeks to prepare for an inspection are long gone. This time round, we got a phone call on the Thursday of […]
Opinion
Just 6,375 out of 13,420 adult retail apprentices succeeded England’s biggest apprenticeship provider has come under fire from the chair of a government watchdog after “appalling” figures revealed less than half of its retail and wholesale leavers qualified last year. Just 47.5 per cent of Elmfield Training’s 13,420 leavers in the sector aged 25 or […]
News
‘It’s a comfort to be asked to stay on,’ says Coventry principal The chair of City College Coventry’s board of governors has refused to sack his principal after a disastrous inspection result. The college was branded inadequate — a grade four result — across each of the education watchdog’s headline fields. The 8,000-learner college was […]
Harlow College has celebrated the highest general FE college qualification success rate in England for the second year running. The Essex college achieved an all-age and all-duration success rate of 94 per cent for the year ending July 2012, meaning 10,171 qualifications were achieved out of 10,820 starts. Principal Colin Hindmarch, who retires this week, […]
A new audit system from the Skills Funding Agency has caused “major concern” within the FE sector. Accountability reviews — described as “a key element of the agency’s intervention strategy” — will consider not just financial management, but also governance and strategic oversight arrangements. The announcement, which sources have told FE Week came as a […]
Technology offers learners different methods for coming to the same outcome. But no one is saying that it’s easy to find the right formula, says Carolyn Lewis What encourages trainers to use technology to support learning and assessment? It could be the number of statistics that are published on technology use, such as how many […]
The increased freedoms and flexibilities that study programmes will allow are to be welcomed, says Dean O’Donoghue. But how they will be judged by Ofsted? From September all post-16 providers will introduce 16 to 19 study programmes, coinciding with the raising of the participation age (RPA) and a revised funding methodology. The overall move to […]
Good governance is about far more than a checklist: it is about supporting and developing an institution to enhance opportunity and success, says Dr Paul Phillips I have to hand it to chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw. He is a man on a mission, turning his attention to governance. At face value, he seems to […]
The Association of Colleges is “disappointed” by the government’s response to the education select committee’s report on careers advice in schools. The report, published last Monday, concluded that the quality of advice had deteriorated since schools took over provision from local authorities and Connexions last September, a move it called “regrettable”. In its response, the […]
